How did protection paladin and protection warrior both receive buffs while guardian got nothing?
The first guardian druid in M+ shows up at rank 269, the next at 409. Every other tank sees reasonable representation well before that in the sea of blood DKs.
Guardian druid doesn’t even have the incarn-pull niche anymore because DH basically just does that better and more often with their tier set. And, outside of incarn, bear is tissue and lacks the mobility tools to disengage like a DH.
A simple vortex, or typhoon or a hop and you are out.
Barkskin, Survival instincts, frenzied regen, convoke say hi.
Yep, facts.
If you want to talk about mobility lacking, I can most certainly point you to other tanks that suffer far worse than Guardian druid, by a massive margin. So be mindful you aren’t just discrediting your argument with hyperbole.
Well, you’re making some assumptions here about composition and talent choices. First off, Vortex is only available if you take Rest Affinity as a Guardian druid, which none of us have taken all of SL. If you’re taking it in a Mythic+ setting, you’re frankly not playing optimally.
Secondly, yes a simple Typhoon paired with a Mass Entangle is more than enough. That has been my own goto with Necrotic and I don’t even have to run far, just a few yards and the stacks reset when outside of Incarn, ezpz.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to convey here by just listing off a few abilities.
First, at least in S3 you shouldn’t be playing Night Fae in any Mythic+ other than perhaps in Mists for the Convoke burst you can do if you line up Convoke properly, but otherwise, you will do far more damage as Venthyr with Ravenous Frenzy.
The main problems with SI and Barkskin particularly are you can make a high mitigation build where you have Barkskin and SI more often, but that build simply does not synergize well with the BiS legendary and you have to give up a substantial amount of self-healing that you gain passively from Earthwarnde to make use of that build. The high mitigation build is great for raid progression and less so for Mythic+.
And to Hitoame’s point, the sea of BDK is there for a reason. Their healing throughput is unmatched, and Frenzied Regeneration comes nowhere close.
Furthermore, Protection Warrior mitigates physical damage massively better than a Guardian druid can due to block, critical block, and parry all of which a Guardian druid gets none and a Guardian druid doesn’t have that much more physical armor than a Protection Warrior with the average of 1 or 2 Ironfur stacks up by comparison.
So I can see Hitoame’s point. The 35% nerf to Guardian’s tier should have been reverted imo, and furthermore, Incarn should have been adjusted going into S4 to be on a 2 minute cooldown at a minimum to allow them to remain competitive.
My aim was to compare directly to DHs who might also find themselves “out of juice” and need to quickly retreat to buy time.
While a DK isn’t going to be going anywhere in a hurry, they don’t really need to.
At the moment with the conduit buffs to steed, I think paladin actually does better than guardian. But im happy to say that’s preference.
In the right situation, sprint or wild charge can work, but leaving bear form-- especially when you are in danger and need to kite–is very risky. It’s the kind of thing that might seem more reasonable if bear was very strong and needed a tradeoff. If you are just a hair too close when you use the shift you could be quickly deleted, but if you’re relying on it as your mobility, you don’t necessarily have vcd a way to get out of that danger zone, particularly when dealing with lieutenant mobs.
Mob control is not the same as mobility to quickly get away from mobs regardless of whether they are lieutenants or not or whether they are casters/archers or not.
All tanks have defensives for the really scary moments. The problem is that every moment outside of incarn is a really scary moment for bear.
Is it though?
You still have iron fur and ursocs shield which suit us quite well when used properly. The only difference outside of incarn is the frequency in which you refresh the shield, meaning you will inevitably take damage between thrash/shield applications.
That’s what FR is for….
That’s what healers are for…
That’s tanking.
That’s literally what we’re supposed to do.
Take damage.
Like……
What?!!
Are you serious right now?
For relatively high content yes, I am serious. A tank’s job is to deal with damage intake better than the other group members, not to take as much damage as possible.
Bear–relative to other tanks–is very squishy.
“fOr rELAtIvLeY hIgH cOnTenT”
100% incorrect.
Like…. Not even close
Pick any key and compare damage taken.
Like… you thought I was just speaking from personal experience ?
Nah dude.
Read some logs before you come here with all that hyperbole.
I’ll do if for you.
25+NW
Guardian: 12m
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/MXNC4dAmztcvWKpj#fight=17&type=damage-taken
BDK: 17m
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Vpx7RWLhnw49aJKv#fight=6&type=damage-taken
Brew: 14.8m
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/VFT86ktQZ4z7M2qn#fight=2&type=damage-taken
Don’t make up lies on the internet.
Mmmk?
I think we’ll just have to agree that it is indeed preference. I haven’t seen any moment where I haven’t been able to get out of harm’s way as a Guardian druid when left to my own devices, sans lieutenant mobs that can’t be stunned, snared, or CCed.
Absolutely, but there really shouldn’t be a moment where you need to shift from bear, you have roar, you have typhoon, you have mass entangle; all of which are more than sufficient to literally take care of any “I’m seriously in trouble moment” if nothing else to give you or the healer a brief reprive to the damage.
As someone who plays all 6 tanks in the game, I just honestly do not see Guardian suffering when it comes to mobility at all.
Tical hit the nail, it is only scary from the perspective that we are no longer immortal and that we actually take damage outside of Incarn, but with proper positioning, with proper talents, with proper play, its’ not as scary as you make it out to be, quite the opposite when you compare it to several other tank specs in SL right now.
The scary bit outside of Incarn really in my view is whether or not one of my dps is going to rip threat because they can burst damage significantly higher than I can generate snap threat, which is problematic when pushing high keystones. You want to make every second count in a pull and if people have to sit on their hands, with one tank but they can open up right at the outset with another tank, guess who will be meta.
The biggest issues with Guardian, particularly leaving S3 and going to S4 is really the fact that the vast majority of our damage contribution comes from Incarn, it’s on a 3-minute cooldown and the lack of Urh cd reduction just hurts us more than it does ANY other tank by a substantial margin.
If Incarn was reduced to a 2-minute cooldown, it would still be most likely behind every other tank but the gap would be substantially closer than it will be staying as a 3-minute cooldown.
That type of generalization doesn’t work in practice.
Btrewmasters will have substantially more damage taken, but are far safer in most cases because it is at a relatively even and healable level.
DK will take more but heal more.
Yeah, incarn on a 2 minute CD would certainly make the flow of dungeons much better.
“Tissue” absolutely is hyperbole. But bear being on the bottom of tanks is not.
Not for the reasons you’ve listed.
So then lets take a look at the same logs Tical shared, but from a different perspective:
BDK:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Vpx7RWLhnw49aJKv#fight=6&type=resources&source=1
Guardian:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/MXNC4dAmztcvWKpj#fight=17&type=resources&source=1
Neither were ever really in danger and over the course of the entire dungeon I would say outside of the 2 or 3 points where the BDK fell closer to the 25% mark, both remained relatively 50% or greater throughout the entire dungeon.
Now, this will change based on the dungeon, based on the people you play with, etc. If you have DPS who properly stun lock, kick, and do all the things you’re suppose to do, it’s amazing how little damage a Guardian druid actually takes in the grand scheme of the dungeon.
But if we take this NW as a solid example, the druid took less damage, had to heal less, and was above 50% health far more often than the BDK, which doesn’t support your claims imo.
They are defensives a bear can use outside of incarn.
I can’t believe you typed this out when Typhoon and vortex are mutually exclusive.
The response wasn’t about damage but tell that to the bears clearing higher keys as NF much higher than you across dungeons, they must be doing it wrong? While I personally run venthyr - If it is a week where I’m not able to do mega pulls, need the extra defensive or pugging I definitely run NF. There are even Kyrian bears crushing it.
I mean sure, their damage is pitiful outside of incarn as well. Guess we can agree on that?
Well I can’t believe you actually suggested vortex in the first place.
I can think of a lot of reasons. Maybe it’s a bursting week and you are carrying your healer who knows. It was listed as a possible way, in addition to typhoon- to escape a pack per the OP - who said bears can’t. I never said it should always be taken.
Resto affinity was nullified as a viable option to help in this scenario when they decided to require Swiftmend to have an active HoT before usage. By the time you’ve had a chance to shapeshift out, place a HoT, and then Swiftmend, they’re dead if you’ve decided to play against the affix. Same applies for Wild Growth.
Yes.
Worry not, little one.
Laser bear will fix all our problems.
Beef-maul looks promising for raid also.
Maul just needs to be useful universally.
I really dislike the fact that ability bloat is very much part of discussions when you talk about the number of abilities a spec has and when you find a spec that has a button that is used in only niche circumstances and even then it’s better to open the spell book and click it than to bind it, that really says a lot imo.
Okay, whatever disagreement we might have on my original post, on this point we are most certainly agreed. I am very hyped for DF bear.
I know maul has been trash for quite some time. But take a look at how it’s been added to Ursocs shield. It’s going to pack quite a punch and give it’s lots of survivability to boot.
…. and yes, I have coined the build “beef-maul”
Pass it on.